Emily Meets My In-Laws (Episode 2 Recap)

Author: 
Bryce Donovan
Share
Courtesy of ABC
 
 
When it comes to blogging, sometimes you have to rack your brain for hours, often combing the recesses of your mind to mine for any little scrap of relevance that will make a post that’s actually entertaining. And other times your in-laws happen to be sitting next to you on your couch watching The Bachelorette for the very first time and literary gold falls right into your lap.
 

What follows is my best attempt to give a summary of Episode 2 (or what I like to refer to as, “The Learner’s Kermit”) along with any comments or questions made by my in-laws.

***

The episode opens in a puzzling way with a pseudo news story about how excited the city of Charlotte is to have The Bachelorette filmed there, because they’re looking for some good exposure (a sentiment that the guy with the abs apparently shared all the back in Episode 1). Quickly it moves onto a shot of Emily and her potential suitors, which naturally prompts my father-in-law to ask, “These people really get married?” (In answering this question I did some internal math and made the executive decision that 1 for 23 constitutes a “no” with a big laugh.)

 

Date one features square-jawed Ryan with his confounding hair in Emily’s kitchen making cookies for Ricki’s soccer team. Naturally, when Emily leaves him in the car and walks out to share the fruits of their labor with the team, my mother-in-law wonders aloud—and to be perfectly honest, I think she might have touched on the one legitimate concern we as viewers of this caliber of TV should have—“I certainly hope they don’t forget the Tupperware after the game.”

 

Emily’s comment toward the end of the date reminds me how annoying it is when the bachelor or bachelorette acts like they somehow planned the damn date themselves. “What? Oh THIS? Well, the band owed me a favor so I called them up to have them come play for just the two of us since we’re celebrating our 37-minute anniversary.” At the conclusion of the date my father-in-law—who my wife says has a solid track record of identifying cornballs on sight (wait …)— notes that Ryan doesn’t make good eye contact and thus he’s not on the show for the right reasons. Since he’s never seen the show before, we’ll cut him some slack. He didn’t know that in Bachelor land, the “right reasons” tend to be fame and to publicly show what a jackass you are. Using the classic interpretation of his comments however, I suspect my father-in-law is gonna end up being right. Only those suspicions won’t be confirmed until the finale when Emily explains to Chris and the live studio audience that Ryan, who proposed to her at the end of the final episode, subsequently tricked her into investing all her money in a new gravity-defying hair gel that allows you to look like you slept on your head, even during your fifth set of power squats, and broke up with her six weeks ago.

 

As we cut back to the rest of the guys hanging around the pool, my mother-in-law says exactly what you’d expect a woman who’s been married for more than 40 years to be thinking when a dozen or so shirtless and perfectly chiseled underwear models lounge by the pool: “I’m worried about them getting sunburned.”

 

Next up is the group date which I will try to gloss over as quickly as possible because I felt bad for the 13 guys who were invited on it due to the overwhelming sexual tension between Emily and Kermit. A few of the highlights: Chris Harrison’s incredible comedic timing, Emily’s ever-growing boobs, and of course, Stevie’s hat.

 

Individual date No. 2 sees Emily and James Van Der Beek hopping on a jet to visit West Virginia, a state that is obviously near and dear to my heart.  As they walk the halls of The Greenbrier I can’t help but think to myself, “Wow. Every room in this place looks like my grandmother’s bathroom.” The date ends abruptly when Dawson realizes Emily brought him on a date to FUCKING WEST VIRGINIA.

 

Back at the bachelor pad, the guys continue to pick on a largely-deserving Kalon, who I’m pretty sure was featured in Time magazine’s ”Up-And-Coming D-Bags of North America.” However, against all odds these jokers continue to pull off the seemingly impossible task of making Kalon look like the lesser of two douches. Tonight’s winner is Dad With The Note For Emily That Was Supposedly Written By His Kid But I’m Betting He Actually Wrote Himself (for brevity’s sake I probably should have bothered to learn his name), who condescendingly berates Kalon by acting like being a parent is some sort of great honor (no offense, son), telling him to, quote, ”Stop. Check it!” somewhere in the neighborhood of 54 times. Naturally, this makes me vomit in my mouth.

 

As the episode comes to a close, Emily once again cuts the wrong guys, probably because she was still disoriented by this.

 

(NOTE: Bryce will be posting weekly synopses of the genius that is The Bachelorette the day after each new episode airs. To see older posts, or simply catch his thoughts about the other members of the Bachelor franchise, feel free to visit his website, www.brycedonovan.com. Or don't. But you should definitely do one or the other.)